Python in e-commerce

Why should you choose an open-source e-commerce? Choosing a platform for an online store

Even before the pandemic, e-commerce offered tremendous opportunities. With each passing year, e-commerce has grown and played an increasingly important role. In the era of pandemic restrictions, e-commerce, and online shopping were necessities and opportunities.

This is especially true since Python, Django, and Saleor offer, together and separately, the possibility of rapid digital transformation, including building an online store tailored and customized to the already existing business and internal processes.

They offer an easier way to enter the market and establish a presence without building a business and logistics foundation from scratch, significantly accelerating an organization's digital transformation.

Nevertheless, it's also important to think ahead, creating an online store that will naturally grow with the business and be able to meet increasingly complex requirements. For e-commerce businesses, time and costs are essential assets.

Open-source software, available without purchasing expensive licenses, allows commercial use and means huge savings.

It's not just about the savings from the lack of fees but also the profit from the fact that open-source software is created by thousands of dedicated developers who constantly develop it, improve it, enhance it, and adapt it to new conditions.

On the one hand, a well-chosen stack of open-source software provides us with a vast array of tools to build any business logic of our e-commerce solution in a time acceptable for sales and business.

On the other hand, it significantly speeds up the performance of routine tasks in web development (software development), logistics, financial sales processing, etc.

Proven open-source solutions (e-commerce framework) and a wide range of functionalities provide access to extensive documentation, a collection of best practices, a high level of security, and a large solution community.

Open-source in the case of e-commerce (but this rule applies to any business) ensures a much lower entry threshold and allows us to allocate funds to other areas.

Open-source software also provides the opportunity to use technology that:

• Has been subjected to a market usability test and passed it.
• Is constantly developed, tested, and improved by developers from different parts of the world with experience in different markets, which provides a vital accumulation of knowledge and experience.
• Is universal and has fewer limitations compared to commercial solutions, and can be freely modified to suit individual needs.
• Provides a high level of security and reliability.
• Is very quickly adapted to market changes — new capabilities and solutions emerge much faster within open-source than in the commercial domain.
• Guarantees much greater stability — its development isn't dependent on financial success or the software developer's competitive strategy.

When deciding between Python, Django, and the Saleor platform, we should be guided by sensible reasons, such as those related to the following:

• Expected number of users and customers of an online store and the seasonality of sales
• Anticipated traffic that we'll need to handle effectively and efficiently
• Complexity and uniqueness of sales processes
• Possibility of store development, the use of complex functionalities
• Ensuring the security of users, customers of a store, and the store itself.

In other words, we need to consider the problems of scalability, performance, security, maintenance, and development of an online store.

These are technical problems related to user experience, competitive strategy, and e-business development strategy. They condition each other and, as a whole, determine market success or failure.

Why use the Django framework as an e-commerce platform to create an online store?

Because of the scalability, you fool! In one sentence, we can summarize the most important reason for using the Django framework to create an online store.

Django is, above all, a web framework; it's not a monolithic e-commerce platform like PrestaShop or Magento.

It gives us the ability to create any logic for handling users. It's a framework that allows us to create a fault-tolerant, data integrity, and security-oriented backend for any web system.

Thanks to its versatility and huge library base, Django also works well as part of applications based on microservices or the headless CMS.

One of the main determinants of software scalability (including an e-commerce platform) is the extent to which we can divide the application into completely independent components.

A well-scalable application will have many independent components running on a separate infrastructure. Such an application can handle a seasonal, variable, and unpredictable number of users.

Platforms based on monolithic solutions, e.g., OpenCart and WooCommerce, are much less scalable, as all store components run within one application, one code, and usually one server.

Elements such as a store's frontend, the operation of the sales process by both the user and the store's backend, the CMS, the blog, sales statistics, and much more are triggered, to a greater or lesser extent, every time a user clicks on a link in the store. This is very inefficient, and such an application can hardly be called scalable.

Django combined with solutions such as Saleor and technologies such as FastAPI, Flask, or AWS, allows us to create truly scalable and error-tolerant software.

In contrast to monolithic solutions, by using the headless CMS and tools such as Next.js or React, we can create a genuinely unique user experience limited only by imagination and our experience without adapting the flow to the e-commerce platform.

Thanks to Django, we don't have to adapt our business to an e-commerce solution.

Especially in the pandemic era, when many companies have been forced into digital transformation. The ability to establish a presence in the online space without completely redesigning internal processes is vital.

This allows us to redirect or supplement existing sales with new tools seamlessly. The business doesn't need to adapt to the e-commerce platform; it is the platform that needs to adapt to the business.

Django also competes with e-commerce monoliths when it comes to security.

The framework is equipped with strong encryption packages and protection against popular types of attacks. It also has an extensive input validation system.

It also offers a solid user authentication system that can easily be extended or integrated with an external authentication system, such as AWS Cognito. Moreover, a large community supports the framework and regularly patches security vulnerabilities.

Python e-commerce. Summary

1. The most commonly recommended programming language is Python for creating an online store or an e-commerce platform.
2. Python offers real scalability, very high security, strong community support, and promising potential for libraries and add-ons.
3. Python, backed by the Django framework, and the capabilities of Saleor's e-commerce platform offer, together and separately, the opportunity for rapid digital transformation.
4. Python, Django, and Saleor allow us to build an online store that is tailor-made and adapted to existing business and internal processes.
5. Python, Django, and Saleor offer an easier way to enter the market and establish a presence without building a business and logistics foundation from scratch, significantly accelerating an organization's digital transformation.
6. An optimal stack of open-source software gives us access to the most useful tools to build any business logic in an acceptable amount of time.
7. Open-source solutions, such as Python, Django, and Saleor, provide access to extensive documentation and a collection of best practices, a high level of security, and access to a large solution community.
8. Python is recommended for online businesses because it is fast for creating an online store, has useful frameworks and libraries available, has solid documentation, and is highly compatible with different systems without sacrificing performance.
9. Moreover, Python is a beneficial solution from any perspective — short-term or long-term.
10. In Python, maintenance, development, and implementation of new functionalities are much simpler, less time- and work-intensive.
11. Scalability is one of the most important reasons for using the Django framework to create an e-commerce platform.
12. Django is a web framework, not a monolithic e-commerce platform like PrestaShop or Magento. It allows us to create any logic for handling users.
13. Django is a framework that allows us to create error-tolerant, data integrity-oriented, and secure backend e-commerce solutions for any web system.
14. Monolith-based e-commerce platforms don't provide scalability, which is similar to solutions created with Django.
15. Thanks to the headless CMS and tools such as Next.js or React, we can create a genuinely unique user experience.
16. Django is equipped with strong encryption packages and protection against popular types of attacks.
17. Saleor Commerce is an open-source platform built in Python, GraphQL, Django, and React. As a result, it can offer solutions that provide the desired scalability, performance, stability, and security.
18. All components of this software are separate and independent microservices.
19. The platform's distinguishing features are its headless architecture and API-first approach, which allows it to integrate a solution into existing software at will.
20. Using the potential of Python, the Django framework, and Saleor, it's not the business that needs to adapt to the e-commerce platform; it's the e-commerce platform that needs to adapt to the business.